MH17 disaster has torn us apart: victims’ family

The loss of Mick and Carol Clancy in the air disaster has ripped apart the family, with siblings no longer speaking and upset over a ‘fake’ funeral.

Bryan Clancy and wife Lisa. Picture: AAP

The devastation and intense grief of losing their Illawarra ­parents Mick and Carol Clancy in the MH17 disaster has ripped apart the Clancy family.

In a heartbreaking victim ­impact statement read to the MH17 trial in Amsterdam, one of the couple’s brothers, Bryan Clancy, revealed he no longer speaks with his sister, and his younger brother has been consumed by trying to find who pressed the button that sent the Buk missile skywards, killing 298 people on board when it exploded over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

Four men are on trial for mass murder.

Mr Clancy 64, a teacher at ­Albion Park Public School for two decades, and Mrs Clancy, 57, a teacher at Lakelands Public School and Figtree Public School were on board MH17 returning from a European holiday.

Bryan Clancy told the court that many people at the couple’s funeral were unaware that ­despite a full-sized coffin, Mick’s contained only a small part of his leg bone.

He said this funeral was “a fake” and revealed that “this has caused friction in the family”. He said the loss of his parents had been profound and the only person he could talk to about it all was his wife, Lisa.

“I have been robbed of a brother who was a gel who bonded the family together and now I have a family that has been fractured forever,’’ he said.

Employees of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service look at the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 two days after it crashed in a sunflower field near the village of Rassipnoe, in rebel-held east Ukraine. Picture: AFP

Lisa Clancy said she had a message for Vladimir Putin: “I want the Russian President to stop lying and admit to shooting the plane and to tell the Russian people what he has done … when his country blew a hole in that plane, he blew a hole in our family.”

Madeleine Wright told the court of the confusion, disbelief and horror at learning her sister, Catholic nun Philomene Tiernan, was on board the aircraft.

Ms Wright said that her only surviving sibling had been married to the church, having ministered to three generations of Sacred Heart girls in schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. At the time of her death she was the spiritual adviser and mentor to boarding students at Kincoppal-Rose Bay, School of the Sacred Heart.

Ms Wright said that as well as having 15 nieces and nephews, Sister Phil had all the love of the “daughters’’ she had taught.

The trial continues.